It’s midnight ET and the returns are mostly in. The LP got far less than its usual one percent of the vote, the percentage we got in 1980. At this moment, your candidate has 0.4 percent of the vote. After 44 years of hard work, tens of millions of dollars and many millions of hours of volunteer time, we are worse off than where we were 44 years ago. The finest men who ever ran for the LP, Ron Paul and Harry Browne, also got far less than one percent. I ran a fundraiser for my friend Harry in Buffalo and saw Ron speak in NJ in 1988.
Indeed, there is less liberty now than when the Party was founded in 1971 and government is much larger and more powerful and continuously growing all the time at every level.
It’s time to change strategies and tactics and change them drastically and quickly. Politics is a rigged game. I know because I have been active in electoral politics for fifty years. I concluded a number of years ago that this was the case and began to write books proposing that the movement turn sharply towards direct citizen action. The first was Government Schools Are Bad for Your Kids (2009).
In light of another electoral failure, I now formally propose that the national and state parties consider this new strategy and vote to adopt direct citizen action as their main approach without completely abandoning electoral politics in selected instances. (For reasons I won’t delve into today, I firmly believe that shifting towards direct action will actually improve the LP’s electoral chances in the future.)
Direct action is the opposite of political action. Political action mainly includes voting, supporting candidates, lobbying and lawsuits. Each approach involves trying to get someone else to do something beneficial. Direct action does not require that we convince others to do something. Rather, we make choices that benefit ourselves but also tend over time to move society towards liberty. Prime examples are voting with your feet to move towards freer states, counties or towns and voting with your children by removing them from government schools. Each benefits you immediately but also tends to move society closer to liberty.
I have an extensive program of direct action ready to roll out with additional options limited only by the creativity of party members. Major forms of direct action include:
Voting with your feet
Voting with your children
(boycotting government schools)
Voting with your health
Voting with your verdicts
(jury nullification)
Voting with your arms
(get armed, get fit, get trained)
Voting with your wallet
(buy local for liberty)
These programs are in various states of development but several are ready to roll out. These include:
*Walk for Liberty, encouraging all persons able to do so (85% of Americans), to walk 7500 steps a day to drastically reduce mortality and morbidity and slash health care costs and taxes.
*Voting with your feet. I already have a ranking of the 100 freest counties. With the talent and resources of the LP, we could easily roll out an app ranking all 3000 counties in the country. The county, not the state, is the relevant unit to consider when moving.
*Grand jury education program. We did a pilot project in Niagara County, NY. It’s ready to roll out in all 3000 counties.
*Economics in five lessons. This is a thirty-minute presentation that is a primer on the five key principles of economics. The audience gets another thirty minutes for questions. This is ready to roll.
These and other ideas are discussed on my website, LibertyMovement.org and in my five books on direct action:
1. Government Schools Are Bad for Your Kids
2. Direct Citizen Action
3. Progressivism: A Primer
4. The Second Amendment Works
5. How We Can Revive the Liberty Movement
I also spoke to the LPNY on this subject.
I would be happy to speak to your committees and conventions in person or remotely to discuss this proposal further.
Just so you know, I want to list some of my activism on behalf of the LP in the last 44 years:
1. Voted for Roger McBride in 1976 (my first vote for President)
2. Chair of the Erie County NY LP 1980
3. Elector for Ed Clark for President 1980
4. Chair of the Erie County NY LP 1993-4
5. Candidate for the LP nomination for NY Governor, 1993-4
6. Attorney of record, Libertarian Party of Erie Cty. v. Cuomo, 970 F. 3d 106 (2nd Cir. 2020), cited in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association, Inc. v. Bruen, 597 U.S. 1 (2022).
7. Former NYLP Attorney.
8. Attorney for NYLP and Green Party in Libertarian Party of N.Y. v. N.Y. State Bd. of Elections (2022). Argued the case in the District Court and U. S. Court of Appeals.
9. Won four election cases for Libertarians.
Thank you for keeping an open mind and let me know your thoughts.